Frank Fischer, on Foreclosure Counseling in 2007

“I think we might have been one of the first places in the country to do default counseling.

The problem in default counseling is the immoral or unfair loans that are given to people. I guess we can still call them predatory loans. It’s tragic because people are losing their houses left and right because the loans are so bad.

The problem with loans today is the original lenders and brokers have defaulted on their fiduciary responsibility to their clients. This responsibility is exactly the opposite of what they do in practice. They lie to the client and withhold information. They don’t act for the best interest of the clients. They make money for themselves to the detriment of the client.

That’s the whole problem with this city. They put people in houses they couldn’t afford or get people to refinance and give them bad loans. My goal would be to have that stopped. We could expose it more and more and perhaps work on legislation preventing it. A lot of times this stuff is legal. The spoken word has led the client to understand the opposite of what the client signs on paper. So it’s legal, but to my point of view immoral.

That is the big thing in Baltimore in housing.”

– Frank Fischer, July 2007

The St. Ambrose Mortgage Default Counseling program, now called Foreclosure Prevention Counseling, began in the mid-1970’s in response to a request from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mortgage Default Counseling was the first expansion of services beyond the organization’s grass roots activism and homeownership education services.